Safety evaluation method of human-care robot control

Abstract

This paper proposes safety evaluation method for use in various kinds of control strategies for human-care robots. In the case of a careless collision between a robot and a human, impact force and impact stress are chosen as evaluation values, and a danger index is defined to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of each safety strategy used for control. As in the previous paper on safety design, this proposed method allows us to assess the contribution of each safety control strategy to the overall safety performance of a human-care robot. In addition, a new type of robot simulation system for danger-evaluation is constructed on a workstation. The system simplifies the evaluation of danger in both the design and control of human-care robots to quantify the effectiveness of various safety strategies. Here we describe the results obtained and the successful optimization of a safety control strategy for human care robots.